


Sympathy for the Devil

by Arnediad



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Maedhros having great boundaries despite bad situations, Mairon being evilly fabulous, Melkor is off having a fancy dinner with the Silmarils or something, NSFW, Other, a complete absence of romance, author committing pairing blasphemy, burning garbage smut, characters doing what ever the heck they want, fancy worded angst, filthy?, not hearty, please heed warnings, pretty much every aspect of sex you'd expect, terrible attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:27:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28565259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnediad/pseuds/Arnediad
Summary: That one where Maedhros and Mairon are really difficult to tell apart, despite the fact that they will never admit it to one another. Even when they are having angry sex in a very dark and fiery dungeon.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo/Sauron | Mairon, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon, last two implied
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	Sympathy for the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> **Jiggery pokery:** There is a consensual element in this that I'm aware is unusual with these characters and this setting. But I needed consent for my own personal sanity. They sort of have a moment at the end but this is really just indulgent smut. like if you ordered a dark chocolate, person-sized truffle and crawled in through the filling and ate your way out. And then did it again because why the hell **_not_**.

If someone were to ask him the most impulsive thing he’d ever done, Maedhros would have been forced to name the Oath of Fëanor.

His sire had a way of making dire things seem more like a patriarchal duty and less like a death knell that would ring out its morbid, gloaming tones for hundreds of years. At the time, it had seemed like the honorable thing to do, and he had no concept of the death and pain that would follow. Even less had he a concept of war, _true_ war; not just a somewhat vague war between Vala and Vala.

The Kinslaying, in its initial moments in Alqualondë, had felt like something out of a dream. Even now, he has trouble piecing together the moments of it. It was the strain of duty and loyalty towards his sire and the cries of his dying kin ripping him in twain. He would, he had realized in the fray of it, when blood was coated so thickly over his vambraces he had trouble keeping a grip on his blade, he would be a _King_ to these people...or perhaps not exactly, but he was the heir to the throne, a very great throne, and he was killing his subjects, or those who would look at him as a liege lord and defer to him.

Of course, no one was spared, but the thought still plagued him.

Alqualondë would be his second greatest impulsivity, and only second because it was a causal reaction to the first. If he had a slightly more reasonable head on his shoulders, he might have been able to recognize the Silmarils for what they were...or perhaps what they were not. But he hadn’t, and now he _couldn’t_ , because finding them was the only thing that would bring him true peace.

He did not, in truth, know what drove him to make the vow and then hold to it. He had only known, watching his family burn the ships, that he had made the _wrong choice_ , and so he had refused. He had refused...for whatever good it did him. Fëanor had looked at him with disappointment ever-after; which was not very long, considering _Dagor-nuin-Giliath_ and his fateful ride to Morgoth’s stronghold. At the time, he’d felt torn between his _atar’s_ clear disapproval of him and his certainty that burning the ships was wrong.

Feigning to treat with Morgoth was also one of his regrets, but not near to one of his greatest.

Still, it had been somewhat piggish of him to assume that the Dark Lord would merely _hand over_ one of the Silmarils after going through so much trouble and trickery to steal them in the first place. Outside of the Oath, Maedhros had admired his father’s handiwork at the time...for it is difficult for an _ion_ not to look at his _atar_ and not think him grand and without flaw. The Oath drove him, mostly, and that Oath was more of his sire than it was of him...he can acknowledge that now. Now, of course, being too late and too little. Maedhros shifts and the manacles clamping his wrists together are cold enough that their movement against his skin chafes him, making him wince. The floor beneath him is cold and unyielding.

Cold...but not unclean.

Angband is a fortress without reckoning, at least by his memory. He has heard tales of Utumno, but with the glory and splendor of Valinor before him, it was difficult to imagine such things. Early then, were the days of the _Eldar_...more innocent, yet somehow still fraught with a primordial danger. It is strange to see such a danger up close; to acknowledge its solidity in his existence...even if he had known it as a certainty beforehand.

Of the structure in its entirety, he has seen very little. Stretching a manacled hand out before him, Maedhros flexes his fingers contemplatively before testing the strength of the metal. It holds, and he makes a soft sound of amusement at his blind foolhardiness. They’d taken him in through a rear battlement, amidst a garrison of orcs so vast it was difficult to see the end of them. A show of power, to be sure, but he had deigned to show no emotion in regards to it long before setting foot inside.

Regardless, it is beyond vast.

Beyond the garrison is the core of the fortress. This they had entered through a side door; himself and two Balrogs who seemed content to shunt him around and speak to one another in a hissing, fire-inundated tongue he couldn’t understand. Down shadowed and hulking galleys with pillars that stretched taller than twelve elves standing atop one another...meticulously clean yet unused. Great tapestries were hung in corridors without an end; black swathes of silver and gold-embroidered tableau were dotted with the occasional strange and ghastly coat of arms. His footsteps echoed on flagstones as smooth as river rocks...atop glossy marble and carpeted mess halls. He was given the impression that perhaps these had been occupied when Angband was still an outpost to Utumno, but he couldn’t be sure.

This, too, was a display.

Dazed though he was from the events that had transpired...from a somewhat vague pain in the rib area that told him one was fractured or cracked, Maedhros could still acknowledge that none of the rooms he was led through like a tourist were essential for everyday upkeep. It didn’t last more than an hour, in any case; sooner than later, his fiery keepers took him down a dizzyingly steep stairwell...down to where he could hear the screams of what he was sure was more of his kin trapped and locked away. Or perhaps they weren’t his kin...he couldn’t say who they would be, only that like him, they were prisoners. Prisoners, and to a great, open area around a fiery cliff he was led; above that which he could see was a magma chamber. The cages were inlaid in the rocks around him...stretching up, up, up to a sky blotted out by ash and char. Here, the screams were loudest.

They left him there.

Not in a cell, however, but chained just to the side of that hanging precipice. How long he stood there, he does not know. Long enough that his legs grew tired and he was forced to sit, that much is certain. It occurred to him, after a long while, that there was no traffic in and out of the area where he’d been placed; he is forced to assume that this was intentional. For a brief moment of hysteria, he thinks that perhaps they mean to sacrifice him.

Plagued as he is by the monstrous reality of his failure to defend his people, Maedhros can acknowledge it is likely more than he deserves. A quick death, it would be; swift and burning and defiant like his sire. He cannot -though he tries very hard-find any reason to take pride in it. For what pride can he take in the killing of his own? In his subjugation to greed, even if it is greed by proxy?

**_“I did not expect regret from a son of Fëanor.”_ **

The voice itself is unpleasant, though not in a manner blatantly obvious. It is more the fact that there is no speaker-at least none that he can see-but the sense of enormous presence is nearly suffocating. The sound of it brings to mind the slow coil of black smoke over a signal fire; thick, cloying, and visible for miles around. As quickly as it comes it vanishes, along with the impression of being alone...but it seems to hover about...in the walls...perhaps in the very stones themselves. It echoes, and in that echoing is an emptiness so vast it makes him cold inside.

“I say we gut it and be done with it.”

Orcs, Maedhros muses darkly, are creatures of straightforward brutality. Having battled a few at this point, he is not ignorant to the general theme of their combat-related banter; which mostly relates to how they are going to cook their adversaries once they have defeated them. It is-he thinks in a fit of black humor-a bit ironic how Morgoth’s servants have been brought up to look at their enemies like culinary items. It is also clever because it further solidifies the correlation of killing with survival. If you eat what you kill, you must kill often.

The two orcs in front of him are small in stature; slightly bent and crooked...with mottled skin and yellowed, glaring eyes. Each carries weapons that appear to be a blend of iron and another, blacker metal he cannot identify. He did not hear them arrive, presumably due to the voice from before, but there is very little he can do chained to a wall.

“Well,” Maedhros drawls. “One of you had better say it.” Snarled, blackened teeth draw back in what he can only assume are twin expressions of bemusement. It is very hard to tell, however, considering the overall grotesque nature of the creatures in general. “Hurry” he continues with mock-levity. “‘Lest I grow old and perish in my waiting.”

“We should eat it,” one of the orcs hisses.

“There you go” the eldest son of Fëanor mutters. “Now you’ve got it.”

“Maybe we should cook his tongue first” the comment is accompanied by a snarled, grimy hand yanking his hair from his face even as another prods him hard enough to hurt. “Not much meat on his bones, eh? But talks enough.”

“I-”

-Whatever he meant to say is quickly silenced with a blow to his left ear; it is cupped enough that it sets it to ringing, and hard enough that he feels whatever gloves the orc is wearing tear the skin. It is distantly painful to the pain in his head, however, and it takes concentration to remain silent...to not protest.

“He’s a pretty thing” is the suddenly greedy observation. “Maybe we could-”

_“You will do nothing.”_

First impressions have always stuck with Maedhros.

It might be, he surmises later, why he was so quick to fold after the fact...but that is neither here nor there. That and since elves are immortal, first impressions are a much rarer thing without travel. Growing up where he did, in the manner in which he did, such new impressions were few and far between. So it is when he looks first at the figure before him, he finds it hard to comprehend him beyond his initial presence. Tales...of course, he has heard of Melkor’s most favored servant. Most of them are terrible, some of them vague, and some of them mythical. _'Gorthaur'_ , as he has been so dubbed, is a figure wrapped in legendary horror; in death, in suffering, and ruthlessness.

He is _not_ -in Maedhros mind-the figure that stands before him.

Certainly not, with its marigold and orange-colored eyes, vaguely shadowed...as if lined with kohl. Not with a face so fair and yet fierce, framed with a wealth of hair the same color as those eyes. Tall, perhaps of equal height to him; Gorthaur is swathed in traditional garb for the times; mail breeches and boots, a shortened hauberk, and a long, black sword strapped to the belt at his waist. As he watches, however, the traditional-wear melts...slurs and morphs into an elaborate surcoat of rich black and maroon. High-collared with winged shoulders, it gives the impression of preeminent grandeur without the excess of flair.

Maedhros understands, perhaps instinctually, that the garb is as much a making of ëalar as it is a physical garment. Likewise is the hröa he is presented with not truly what Gorthaur looks like, merely a beautiful-a _very_ beautiful-facsimile of representation. That does not, of course, make it easier to look away. It is not a soft artistry of appearance like many of his kind possess. Nay, it is fiercer, perhaps even wilder and he supposes that such unfettered feyness only adds to the allure.

Some of his enemy seems to shift and stretch as he watches. A touch of stitching to the surcoat here, a length of hair over the forehead there...glimmering like fiery gossamer. The ‘kohl’ around the eyes deepens to a darker shade and the epidermis over a pale but shapely face gains hue and color. Fingers lengthen slightly, even as lips twitch into a cruel smirk, as the head tilts much like that of a bird of prey.

It is as beautiful as it is alien and terrible.

“Son of Fëanor.” The voice is the same as the one Maedhros had heard before, though slightly less invasive. Smooth, like velvet, rich like honeyed mead. “You practically gifted yourself to Us, should I take it as a sign of your fealty?”

“I’d rather die.”

The response is automatic, knee-jerk, and built on a years-hardened foundation of honor and valor. It is prideful but honest, even if the statement carries empty weight in such circumstances. The grin he receives in return tells him it was exactly the response that was expected, and it gives him no comfort.

“What would the price be, I wonder, for your loyalty?” the Maia continues, his voice tripling for a moment before settling once more.

“I cannot be bought” Meadhros retorts through clenched teeth. “You know this already, Gorthaur.”

The aforementioned individual tuts in mock-disappointment before beginning to pace before him. His gait is unnatural in its smoothness. Indeed, his manner of movement is almost grotesque in its perfection.

“I prefer Mairon” is the eventual response. “At least, under the circumstances, I will permit it.” When Maedhros does not reply, he continues to pace. “You and I both know that you can be bought” is the cold continuation under the ghost of a smile. When Maedhros looks horrified, he throws back his head and laughs. “Alas, such things are not mine to give...though I see not their worth, truthfully. And to give them to you would be too much of a kindness.” Another discerning look and the Maia turns to leave, stopping only to speak over his shoulder. “I wonder, son of Fëanor, if you can be _persuaded_.”

* * *

It goes like that for what-he assumes-is several days.

Gorth- _Mairon_ visits him for a short amount of time, heckles him, and then leaves looking amused and contemplative. Maedhros is not entirely sure he likes it but he supposes it's better than being tortured into oblivion. Simultaneously, he understands that this is a temporary situation; that he _will_ eventually be brought to judgment and whatever he does will deem him worthy or unworthy. He is steadfast in his certainty that no matter what he does he will remain unworthy because he cannot-without sacrificing himself entirely-join Morgoth’s cause. He has the uncomfortable suspicion that Mairon knows this...but does not know the means to an end.

It is hard, when he is hungry and tired-to not fixate on the fact that Mairon is the only comely thing he sees.

 _Mairon_ , he suspects, knows this too, and with each passing day, his ability to ignore him becomes less and less. So when Morgoth’s right hand comes in for the tenth time and comes to stand directly before him...looking down at him like fruit ripe for the taking, he is both surprised and not. Likewise is he unsurprised when he is unchained-though only by the lead-and ferried down to a deeper part of the fortress. It is an open area, to some degree. All around is the glow of volcanic activity but at the epicenter are a dozen forges...all of them alight...all of them spewing forth power that Maedhros cannot even begin to comprehend. It is almost uncomfortably hot, but having spent days in the coldness of the prison-chamber above, it is a welcome heat.

When the Maia unclasps his manacles and throws them to the side he is, again, unsurprised...and yet simultaneously resigned. The flame-haired being begins to undress, watching him as he does so...and he tries-vainly-not to let the act stir him.

“You desire me,” Mairon says matter-of-factly.

Maedhros thinks Fingon is going to kill him.

Or Gorthaur- _Mairon_ -whatever his name is.

“Of course I desire you” he replies, standing where he’s been left. “Do you not know of the fickleness of elves?”

Something flickers across the Maia’s visage then, something he isn’t entirely sure he likes. It takes him a moment to realize that Mairon is disappointed that he didn’t boast of valor or honor, that he didn’t proceed _predictably_. With this nugget of information between his ears, Maedhros snorts. And, then, when he cannot help it, he snorts again.

“Think not that you will hear any platitudes regarding perfection from me,” he remarks. “I am a son of Fëanor.”

“And what difference should that make?” the flame-haired being before him asks, lip curling in disgust.

Maedhros smiles and tilts his head just enough to the side for it to be uncomfortable before lifting his chin and affixing his gaze to cat-eye, burning irises.

“I won’t bore you by begging you for mercy or waxing poetic on the hidden values I ‘possess’ that you somehow have overlooked” he replies smoothly.

It is a moment in time suspended, then. Mairon’s gaze is an observant...calculating thing balanced on the edge of an invisible knife. Maedhros does not act, nor does he move to show any inclination of escape. He accepted, long before the current moment, that fighting and resisting would get him nothing. It goes against his nature, against almost _everything_ he believes in, but it is also the only survival method of approach.

Around them, the forges seem to glow brighter for a minute, and the air shifts so there is just enough breeze to ruffle hair...to lift the pale of scarlet locks from two shoulders. When Mairon moves again it is a blur, but he is ready for it. When a body far more powerful than his could ever be barrels into him-knocks him over-he is prepared and falls properly...much like he would if struck in combat.

Sprawled on oddly-warm flagstones with a heavy torso atop him, Maedhros can only blink as the Maia rises to shove him backwards-shoulders flat-so he can lean over him, a riotous grin on his face. It is accompanied by a growl that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere; what little of Mairon’s garb remains shimmers...like a black mirage. It shimmers and then bursts forth at the small of his back in a halo about him that is reminiscent of feathers, of birds of paradise but _afire_. He is affixed to it even as it shakes again and the rattle that accompanies it reminds him of the corn snakes he and Fingon used to find in years of yore...in the fields of Valinor.

 _”Good”_ is the snarled response.

Maedhros is suddenly without a scrap of covering.

He isn’t entirely sure how it happens, only that one moment the remnants of his garb are there, and then suddenly they aren’t. He isn’t cold, but he is exposed. Swallowing, blinking away the apprehension and reticence-because they won’t do him any good-Maedhros concentrates on the feel of skin upon skin. Mairon is running his fingers down his torso like he is assessing his aesthetic worth, so great is his concentration that when Maedhros reaches up to tug on a thread of that wild hair he barely blinks.

“Just to be clear” Maedhros says calmly. “You do intend to kill me, don’t you?”

Mairon does not reply initially. Instead, he continues with his study of the physicality before him...traces every inch of him in a facsimile of affection before a hand lifts his chin and directs their mouths to one another. It is not a kiss he has experienced before; there is no feeling behind it but it is still gratifying. Mairon takes his mouth like he wishes to devour it, and perhaps he does. He responds with equal fervor and vitriol because he understands that this is a thing of indulgence and not a thing of affection.

The tongue that teases his lips is searing hot in one moment and then cold, it feels not-entirely real and yet _too_ real. The breath is stolen from his lungs and is swallowed down...down...down and he is given an impression of a blaze...of his nerve endings coming alight even as his head feels almost incomparably heavy. It goes on and on until he cannot help but wrench himself away to breathe. When he does his temporary partner chuckles, dark and thick and wanton against the slope of his jaw.

_”Yes.”_

The statement is accompanied by a sharp nip just below his ear and he tells himself it should not arouse him as much as it does, but the statement is fruitless. He is not entirely sure if there is no magic involved because when a hand slides down his chest to the cradle of his hips it seems to _glow_ invisibly...a trail of sparks that have no substance but are nevertheless very real. He reciprocates, of course. Takes both of his hands and buries them in that too-bright hair so he can latch onto the pale column of a throat. He draws a knee up instinctively and groans-close and quiet-as the body above him undulates against him...as hard arousal is pressed against the crease between thigh and torso.

This is where the initial gentleness ends.

It ends because Mairon shivers and something flickers in his eyes that tells Maedhros he does not _like_ to be overcome and the mouth that returns to his is _hard_. It is hard and full of teeth and unforgiving and the hand that reaches down to fondle him is on the edge of too-rough. At once overwhelming and pleasurable, he responds by yanking on a strand of hair and arching until the laugh that spills from the Maia is tinged with a kind of black hatred mixed with arousal.

They wrestle a bit then, for dominance...though not long and not without forgetting the initial intention of shared pleasure. It is not gentle, certainly not; not so much foreplay as it is a ritualistic dance of instinctual appreciation. There is no excess of gentle fondling, nor is there much appreciation beyond the occasional grasp of shuddering skin, the bite of fingertips on epidermis. When oiled fingers are rubbing against his entrance, Maedhros' ribs are aching but he ignores it in the face of focusing on the stretch...on the face before him observing him with a kind of relentless intensity that is as disturbing as it is arousing.

“Do you do this to all your captives?” Maedhros pants when the throb in his groin becomes almost too much to bear; when Mairon has flipped him over and is mouthing at his shoulder blades as his fingers work him expertly...almost without thought.

“Don’t insult me” is the scoffed reply.

He doesn’t fully understand the statement, but it is hard to think when those fingers curl and press downwards, when they rub across the spot- _that spot_ -that sends white thundering across his vision.

“Your kind” Mairon continues, voice made rough by arousal. “Are so pretty they are ugly.” A twist and Maedhros bites down on his hand to hide a groan. “ _You_ , however, have a spirit of fire...of strength not preoccupied with vanity.” A hand digs into his flank and the retreat of the fingers is an ache he nearly protests against. “And you struggle so, between your platitudes of goodness and your love for darkness.”

Maedhros opens his mouth to respond but is forced to bite his lip instead, to grab fruitlessly at smooth flagstones as he is speared somewhere betwixt delirious ecstasy and the edge of pain. Mairon groans-finally-uninhibited and guttural and harsh as he seats himself to the root.

“I do love a soul embattled” is the half-slurred sentiment against his ear. “It is so much more _delicious_.”

The thrust that follows the statement is pointed and fierce. It is followed almost immediately by another, and then another. Mairon finds a rhythm that is just on the edge of brutal and Maedhros can only go with it initially...can only focus on the thick slide of it...on the swoll bubbling of pleasure pooling in his nethers as he responds as well as he is able. Lifting himself on hands and knees he returns as good as he is given until the sheen of sweat on torso is a thing shared and not just a thing given.

“It seems like a joyless venture” he comments eventually, amidst the sharp acoustics of bodies meeting. “Don’t you ever tire of it?”

A break in the rhythm is enough to know he has struck a nerve. A break, and a harsh yank on his hair- hard enough to make him yelp-and somehow he has ended up sprawled just shy of the entrance to a forge...atop the stone rim and staring into glowing depths. It is a staggering movement, driven by anger and not a little unwieldy but when the rhythm is taken up again it is _deeper_ and somehow _more_.

“You try so hard to be good.”

Mairon’s voice is slow poison in his ear...an almost entirely-distant backdrop to being _full_ of him, of the slick-sweet slide of his cock dragging against his inner muscles. There is the sour tang of pleasure, the scent of sweat, and the facade of hulking masculinity the Maia behind him exudes from this hröa in the throes of pleasure. It smells a bit of fire smoke and a bit like the slow-burn of clary sage and vetiver. A grasp perhaps...a long-fingered, sharp-nailed hand pressing against the small of his back to bring his torso downwards and his posterior upwards...enough of an arch, enough of a _stretch_.

“You pretend to walk the straight and narrow-” is the grunted continuation even as a particularly hard thrust knocks him almost fully atop the forge. “-Tempered by fire and pain, such an _honorable_ soul.” A tongue somewhat too-long circles the nape of his neck before biting down and Maedhros jerks, pants open-mouthed, thinks stars are dripping from the back of his throat. A mouth of ragged teeth he cannot see but feel, and it is hotter than the forge and it is _laughing_ , laughing-snarling and the keening noise that bursts from his lips he really cannot help-cannot think- “-But truly, you just want the _drunk_ of it.”

“I want for nothing” Maedhros pants, but the effect is lessened when Mairon slows their pace, when he hikes an arm around his torso to thumb over the leaking head of his erection. Maehdros nearly bites through his tongue, but it doesn’t stifle the wanton groan that bursts through his clenched teeth. The laugh that follows it is just as black as those that have come before, but now it is mocking.

“Something you share with your kind” is the insidious growl. “You all _lie_.”

Maedhros is not entirely sure why the statement stirs him so. It is, after all, not a necessarily personal statement but he does not like the implication of dishonesty even if it is somewhat true. So when he breaks from their assumed position it is not necessarily due to the pretense of offense but due to the pretense of _honor_.

Mairon puts up a good fight.

Or...perhaps, a semblance of a fight. Maedhros knows-under no uncertain terms-that the Maia is stronger than him by eons. Indeed, when he twists backward-ignoring the part of him that insists upon staying right where it is and being pounded into the forge-the steely grip that momentarily restrains him is immovable. Only after a moment does it yield and when Mairon falls to the floor it is with the ease of someone who has done it a thousand times before...in a descent of blazing autumn and ripped fabric he does it with the grace of one who is dancing a well-memorized waltz.

This is play to him, Maedhros realizes. Even as he hikes up a long leg and gets a grip under a creamy thigh he acknowledges that he has _no_ agency here, and is only allowed to do what he does because it is amusing to the opposite party. When he spits on his hand and reaches down to perform at least some semblance of preparation it is only to discover that that has been done-somehow-already. From his place on the floor, Mairon grins again and that is enough for him to forgo decorum and thrust deep...to the hilt, without care even though he needn’t have bothered.

 _"That’s it”_ is the exhilarated hiss behind a curtain of marigold-and-amber hair. Pale lips curl to show just the hint of teeth as Mairon stretches his arms above his head before tucking them behind in a luxuriant gesture of debauchery. A lithe, almost too-lithe back arches in a smooth circumlocution of indulgent ecstasy, and Maedhros gasps, his vision blurs as the channel around his length _circulates_ , as it twists in a slow, pulsating movement improbable biologically. It sends all the heat in his body pooling towards his nethers in a whiplash of trickled, roiling fire and he nearly takes his cue then.

It is a near thing, a thing suspended… _encased_ in wet and luxuriant heat and Mairon _laughs_ like it’s the most fun he’s had in an age. It is that, ultimately, that gives him enough withwheral to slow; to not take mindlessly until he is spent. He draws it out, makes sure he garners at least some response-which manifests in something that reminds him of a cat purring and is not vindicating at all-he makes it last until he is dizzy with the need for release and the body below him is flushed red and wanton.

 _”Give in”_.

The statement is as absurd as it is clever.

Even as he fights to prevent himself from coming, Maedhros does not miss the insinuation embedded in the words spoken.

“How bizarre” he pants as orgasm rises to take him by the throat. “That you think that by giving you my body I have somehow given you the rest of me.”

It is a gutted, tendril-woven thing; his release. In truth, it has been so long since he has felt the touch of another that he has nearly forgotten it. Mixed among it is a floating, unmeasurable feeling of bodily detachment. He reaches his completion deep within Mairon’s hröa, but his hröa is not a thing of substance and so it feels unreal...feels a glut of gratification mixed with terrible self-deprecation. Only after he has finished does Mairon release, and it is a quiet, shivering thing somewhat dampened by the way those eyes remain affixed to his face...burning him. It is instinct to kiss and the Maia allows it somewhat lazily...like it is an allowed indulgence and not a thing of shared need.

Only after does he regret it.

When the sweat is cooling on his skin...when he is flat on his back on cold flagstones and Mairon is stretched out along the length of his side, when the thick curl of pleasure and magic has dissolved somewhat in his head and his mouth...that is when the regret comes. It comes in a wave that leaves him wasted and choked and _loathing_ himself. Tears are hot pin-pricks in his eyes and he bares his teeth in defiance of them even as Gorthaur makes a disdainful _*tsk*_ 'ing noise.

“And yet,” the Maia says blithely, levering himself up on an elbow and running a long-nailed finger from Maedhros’ sternum to his navel. It sinks in there...scrapes in a circle just hard enough for that strange-hurt to shiver forth before retreating. “In the end you reject yourself.”

“I am not like you” Neylafinwe croaks.

“We’re just alike” Mairon scoffs, sitting up fully and drawing a leg up to rest his head on his knee. He does it so that he’s still facing Maedhros when he settles; the apricot-red of his hair tumbling over a shoulder and cascading about pectorals too beautiful to be things of natural substance. It curls over dusky nipples and he does not allow himself to look further. Naked, with every facet of his physicality exposed and waning in the afterglow of sex, it is such a couple-ish gesture it feels obscene. He is no less naked, but the longer he lies there, the dirtier he feels. “The difference between us is that you reject it and I embrace it.”

“‘Tis all you know how to do,” Maedhros replies bitterly. “Do not deign to lie to me and say that if you could have what you truly desire you would not abandon all of it.”

The hand on his stomach tenses and splays; the nails languidly tracing his pectorals form almost immediately into claws.

“You go too far” is the hissed response.

Maedhros laughs.

“You are just as trapped as I am” he scoffs, stretching despite the pinpoints digging into his abdomen. “But you’re trapped in an army you made to please someone who will never see you. I am trapped by an Oath that will never let me go.” When no response is forthcoming, he returns his gaze to those blazing eyes. “Is it not so?”

“Some would consider lying with me a gift” is the snarled retort.

“Oh, I shan’t forget it, though I think I have not much time left to exist, let alone recollect” Maitimo mutters, too tired now to continue with the hatred...too exhausted to expend more energy on that which will get him nowhere. “Perhaps we are alike” he accedes wearily. “Merely not in the ways that please you.”

The shadow that passes over that immaculate face is a fleeting thing; gone as soon as it comes and overshadowed by scorn and rage...but he sees it. For the most infinitesimal second...Maedhros sees the Maia that _was_.

“I know what you feel” he murmurs, softening but a moment. “To want something you can never have, and if you do have it, knowing that at any moment something greater will most surely tear it from you. If not immediately, then in years...in centuries...in epochs.”

He thinks of Finno...and then immediately forces himself not to.

“He who I love, unlike your love, is soft and warm...like spring honey” Maedhros rasps through the haze that is his rapidly waning consciousness. “He is all things anew, in growth and wholeness, and I have sworn myself to something that promises, for certainty, that I shall never have him.”

“There are elf-midges aplenty in your camps” Gorthaur scoffs, and at this, the King of the Noldor laughs outright.

”Aye! There, are, and fair of face but not quite so fair as he who has my heart” he chortles. Sobering he raises a brow. “And what am I do to? Find some poor _weden_ who may love me despite it all, put my seed in her belly and sire a line of Oath-doomed progeny who neither asked nor would want a part in it?” A snort. “A fine _atar_ I would be then, no better than mine own; _worse_ for not giving the babe a choice. A negligent besnō, never quite there for his lady wife, never quite away. Nay, my time for love has sailed.”

“You are a King” Mairon replies blandly. “King’s take what they wish for.”

“My father was not a good person,” he says steadily even as the ache in his ribs sharpens to a dull throb. “He was a King who took what he wished for, and I do not think he ever got anything he truly wanted.” Mairon gets up-presumably to hunt for his manacles, and he closes his eyes. “A King who takes all and gives none is not a King, not truly. He is just a beggar who has learned to sit in a chair and look grand.”

The hand descends again, only this time to prod at the sore spot at his ribs. Maedhros cannot-not this time-entirely conceal the yelp of agony. Those yellow-orange eyes fixate upon him but a moment, as if gauging his worth...or perhaps his performance, before a warmth at the edge of ice-cold fingertips soothes the area temporarily.

“It is fractured,” his enemy-companion says matter-of-factly. “It is rather up to you to decide whether or not you wish it fixed or fully broken.”

“Is it?” Maedhros mutters and watches as those blazing eyes slide away.

“You could do Our purpose a world of good” Mairon says finally, and he does not miss the finality of the statement. “You could prevent a war barely begun.”

“That is, I am afraid, the problem” Maedhros replies, and does not bother to hide the scorn in his voice. “It is _not good_.”

Settling next to him again, the Maia leans close...close enough that the smug pity in his features is blatantly clear.

“Then you will die” is the feelingless statement...idle as a gust of wind.

This close, he can see each glimmering copper-yellow eyelash ringed-round a blazing iris. He has, at this point, become accustomed to the slightly metallic undertone to Mairon’s scent. So when he yanks at that head of saffron hair and pulls the Maia down for a kiss that he neither participates in nor responds to, he bars his teeth against a closed mouth and grins.

“Perhaps I am but mortal and dimwitted” he murmurs against lips as hot as the forge. “But I pity you...you and your empty love.”

It is not the right thing to say.

It isn’t, but he can’t bring himself to regret it. Even when he is dragged unceremoniously from the chamber with none of the fanfare in which he was brought, he cannot regret the statement. His death, whether it might come in days, in months, or years, is set in stone. Maedhros has no intention of facing death disingenuously or in a state of illusion. He is afforded a cell; in the sense that he is thrown into it without ceremony and with enough roughness that the pain in his ribs increases tenfold. Mairon does not look at him as he leaves, though he does pause before exiting entirely.

“I pity _you_ " he says. “You are weak.”

In the gloom of the dark, Maitimo smiles, though it is sad.

“I do not think you are talking to me,” he says gently.

The snarl that bars Gorthaur’s lips as he slams the iron door shut could have charred stone, and the last night he spends in Angband is plagued with darkness and the knowledge that he has played, and perhaps he has played wrongly, and to his detriment, but he has played well. He thinks of his people, he thinks of his _atar_ , and he thinks of Fingon...and he wonders if he will even be remembered when things have come and gone.

The very next day, Maedhros is hung from Thangorodrim.

He never sees Mairon again.

**Author's Note:**

>  **A/N:** So, this is not the Angbang piece promised. it is coming, likely later this month because I need to study, but my brain just had a couple days of degeneracy I had to work through. Thanks for reading if you struggled through this. Mairon's cloak-thing is modeled after a peacock, yes. please don't ask me why I did that I don't know. 
> 
> *I'm slowly reorienting into explicit slash. I had a little time where I was having trouble figuring out if I could write it anymore, but since I do it for work and because I love the characters and exploring their dynamics, I can. I think I thought that part of me had to change, but it doesn't. 
> 
> **Edit:** I think what I love so much about Maedhros is he’s not really a hero or a villain. He’s someone who got caught up in bs he didn’t fully understand who wants to live a normal life but can’t. He’s fallible [sometimes deeply fallible], not all-powerful but enduring, and cares for his family. 
> 
> And I love Mairon for being Mairon, ofc <3
> 
> Thanks for reading
> 
>  **Translations:**  
>  **atar** - _father_  
>  **ion** - _son_ I took some liberties with this, this is somewhat closer to the Sindarin translation of 'son', but _'yón'_ felt slightly tight-fisted and not quite what I was looking for translative-wise.  
>  **weden** - _maiden_  
>  **besnō** - _'husband'_


End file.
